Strange Bedfellows
by dervlamackay
Summary: Queen Kenna Rys of Stormholt, Uniter of the Five Kingdoms and Defeater of Azura, can confidently strike down her enemies without a second thought, but when it comes to her personal life, it is not that simple. (Kenna/Diavolos, Kenna/Raydan)
1. Chapter 1

Diavolos' hand was surprisingly gentle as he stitched together the gash in Kenna's shoulder where his father's blade had struck; they'd found the infirmary clean and stocked but mostly empty, the healers all gone to rest after tirelessly patching up the wounded soldiers, or tending to the comfort of the seriously and terminally injured. His stitches were small and neat, which Kenna found very telling; the warrior prince had not only led his men into battle, he'd also cared for them when they'd fallen. The catgut caught on her damaged flesh, and she hissed.

"I'm sorry, my queen," he said softly, his eyes warm as they met hers.

"You've done this before," she said, changing the subject to take her mind off the pain.

"For my men," he said simply, returning his attention to his handiwork. "We haven't always been so fortunate to have a healer on hand, and you do what you must to fight another day."

"What will you do now that the war is over?" Kenna asked, trying not to flinch as he continued to stitch her wound.

"Almost done," he said soothingly. "War is all I've known. Perhaps I'll just have to travel further to find one."

"I think you should stay," Kenna told him, as he tied off the last stitch. He cut the sinew close to her skin, and contemplated how best to wrap the shoulder to keep the wound clean.

He looked up at her face. "Hmm?"

"I said, I think you should stay," she repeated, hastily covering her shoulder. Her blood-stained garment was rent from Luther's dagger, and did little to hide her injured state. "Well, I think you should help me back to my rooms so I can rest up for the feast this evening, and then… then, you should stay."

"Stay here in the Five Kingdoms," he asked, "or here in Stormholt?"

She shrugged her good shoulder as he rose to his feet. "I hear there are a few openings for kings."

They walked to her rooms in relative silence, and if she leaned on him for strength, he was grateful for the contact as much as he was her unspoken forgiveness.

At her door, he hesitated before leading her inside to the large, four-post bed. This room had belonged to Queen Adriana, and for two years after that, to his father, whose body was by now cold on the floor of the throne room. "Should I fetch someone for you? Annelyse, or Dominic?"

Kenna shook her head. "I'm fine. I'm just tired. And… you must be, as well. Will you rest with me?"

Diavolos raised an eyebrow at her proposition. "In the queen's bed? People will talk."

"Let them talk. We've earned our rest." Kenna began to shed her armor, wincing as she reached for the fastenings with her injured arm. "Would you help—"

"Allow me," he said, closing the space between them and easing her clothes down onto the floor. Though they'd lain together in the wild less than two days before, somehow now - in the daylight, in the privacy of her rooms, her casual and shameless nudity was almost too intimate for him to bear. He felt the swell of his desire, and took a half-step back.

"Thank you," Kenna said, meeting his eyes. "May I?"

He nodded, almost imperceptibly, and her small hands made quick work of his tunic and settled at the fastening of his trousers. Embarrassingly, he let out a low groan, and she drew her hands back in surprise. "Please," he said through gritted teeth, "don't stop there."

She laughed, a sound like music; he wasn't accustomed to women laughing in his presence, other than Zenobia and her friends taunting him. Kenna's laughter was kind, however, and he felt his answering chuckle bubble up from his belly unexpectedly as the tension he'd felt melted away. Delighted, she reached up with her good arm to pull him down for a kiss. "I don't intend to stop at all," she assured him when they parted.

"You should be resting," he scolded playfully, reaching down to lift her easily by her hips. Her legs wrapped around him just as he'd hoped they would.

"Then by all means," Kenna invited, bending her neck to bite his neck before all but purring in his ear, " _take me to bed_."

* * *

The churning in Kenna's guts had not been eased by bedding Diavolos again. She knew that soon her people would want to see her wed, and she knew she must give them a king. Her attraction to Diavolos was undeniable and, frankly, instant. She felt the heat of desire pool below her belly at the very thought of him. They were kindred spirits, of a sort, both raised noble and soft, yet forged to a hard edge in the heat of battle, both loyal and both, as of that morning, the eldest of their line. Diavolos was the rightful heir to the throne of Abanthus, should he choose to return to Lykos, but it seemed unlikely that would happen unless he had a reason to stay.

But then there was the problem of Raydan. They'd had the same immediate attraction, but he'd also proven himself a loyal friend and ally over time. Diavolos had very nearly helped his father assassinate her that very morning. She suspected – no, she knew – that she loved Raydan. Her heart had shattered when she thought he had betrayed her to join forces with Azura. But she thought she could love Diavolos as well.

Laying naked in her bed, wrapped in the protective limbs of a drowsing Nevrakis prince, Kenna laughed at herself. Her mother had told her that times of war made for strange bedfellows, but finding herself torn between the son of her mother's murderer and an orphaned master of spies was not a situation her lessons had covered.

"If you're still awake after that, I fear I may be out of practice," Diavolos murmured against the skin of her injured shoulder, brushing the softest of kisses just above the line of delicate stitches.

"No. Too much on my mind," she admitted. "Heavy is the head, and all that."

"Mmm," Diavolos agreed. Then, with calculated casualness, he asked, "It's the spymaster, isn't it?"

Her breath caught in her throat, and she was grateful that his face was buried against her neck, because she knew she could not meet his eyes. "You knew."

"I could smell him on you, the night before battle," Diavolos told her, and to her great surprise she could feel him becoming aroused between her thighs. "Do you love him?"

"Yes," she breathed. "I am sorry, Diavolos. I never meant to—"

"Do you love me?" Diavolos shifted, sliding easily inside her once more. To her great shame, she was ready for him again, and her body made no protest. "Do you love me, Kenna Rys? Could you love the son of your enemy?"

"Gods help me," she murmured as he slipped his hand between them to coax her to her completion more quickly. "Yes!"


	2. Chapter 2

The feast had begun, and already there was plenty of dancing to the lively tunes of the palace musicians, and the wine and ale were flowing freely. Kenna scanned the crowd anxiously over the top of her goblet.

"Never thought I'd see the day," Jackson commented, just as her eyes alighted on Diavolos in the crowd. "The shadow of war has finally passed. No thanks to Luther's traitorous attempt on your life."

Kenna winced, touching the freshly-stitched wound in her shoulder. "At least Diavolos made the right decision, in the end," she said, searching the crowd still, hoping to catch a glimpse of Raydan. She knew that if he didn't want her to find him, she would not. "That fight could have gone very poorly if he hadn't chosen our side."

Jackson nodded. "Agreed. We have much to be thankful for this day."

At the edge of the festivities, Kenna spotted Raydan's flowing hair and gold-trimmed tunic. His eyes were fixed on her, and despite the distance between them, she could feel their smouldering intensity. Did he know she'd bedded Diavolos on the eve of battle? Did he know she'd been with him again, after they'd killed Luther together, their blades thrusting into him as one? Raydan was a man who knew things, and Kenna was certain he could see right through her. "We certainly do," she agreed vaguely. "Excuse me, Will. I have to speak with someone."

The castle stables were empty save for the horses, the grooms and smith all having joined the celebrations already, and she wasn't surprised when she felt Raydan's hands upon her waist in the half-dark. "You wanted to see me, my queen?" he asked, turning her around in his arms. "I had thought—well, it doesn't matter what I had thought."

"What you think always matters," Kenna said softly, unable to meet his warm, loving eyes. "You are my—my—" She was unable to bring herself to call him her lover, having taken another so recently, and yet advisor and friend didn't cover her feelings for him.

"I am yours," Raydan finished for her, drawing her close and making her look at him. "That will never change, though I expect the capacity in which you allow me to serve you shall, when you wed Diavolos Nevrakis."

Kenna's breath shuddered and she buried her face in the fine, embroidered silk of Raydan's tunic. "Raydan, I need you."

"And you shall always have me, my queen," he assured her, wrapping his arms around her small frame. "My place is here with you."

Kenna thought of the first time they made love, after they'd taken Lykos from Luther, and the way Raydan had consumed her, overwhelming her senses. And the last time – would it truly be the last time? – just two days prior, after he'd returned to save Kenna from Azura's assassins and dropped from injury and exhaustion. "Then be with me," she whispered.

"Here, among the livestock?" he asked, drawing back slightly to gauge her commitment to the notion. "Certainly not."

"Then where will you have me?" Kenna challenged.

"I would have you on a bed of silk cushions," Raydan told her, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. "I would sip fine wine from the dip of your navel, and drive you mad with every inch of my body that would lend itself to doing so. But you are a queen, and so you shall have a king, and I shall, as is my custom, disappear into the shadows."

"And if you were a king?"

Raydan chuckled. "Well, that would be very interesting indeed. If I were a king, and you were my queen, I think we would spend a month upon those silken cushions, and you would forget what it felt like not to be in complete ecstasy until we finally emerged to rule together."

"Please," she said softly. "If you were simply Raydan Lykel, and I was simply Kenna Rys—"

"There is no 'simply Kenna Rys,'" Raydan interrupted, "but if there were, then we should never have met."

Kenna pushed him away. "Do you wish for me to marry Diavolos? Is this your way of letting me down easy, now that the excitement of bedding a warrior queen has subsided?"

"Every moment with you would be a thrill," Raydan assured her. "I wish for nothing less than to see you in the arms of another, but I am also not a fool. Marrying Diavolos will cement the alliance between Stormholt and Abanthus. You don't have to worry about Aurelia, Bellmere, Ebrimel or Fydoria, but many in Abanthus, and in Lykos in particular, are still loyal to the Nevrakis family. What better way to win them over than to become one yourself, and perhaps bear a few more?"

"You were supposed to talk me out of this," Kenna told him. "I barely know Diavolos. You've been by my side –"

"You know him well enough to lay with him," Raydan said, not unkindly. "If my queen wishes for me to ravish her in a fit of jealousy, you should know that it's taking every last ounce of my control not to do so, each moment we are away from the watchful eyes of your subjects, but I cannot be so selfish as to encourage you to abandon a match that will ultimately benefit the entire realm, however much it pains my very soul."

"Do you love me?"

"With every fiber of my being, Kenna," he said gently. "And I know that you love me, because I can see it in your eyes, amid the torment. Had fate been kinder, perhaps I might have been noble-born, like our dear friend Dominic, so that I might have made a proper suitor for a queen. But I shall have to settle for ardent admirer, because cuckolding the king is most certainly treason."

"Tonight, there is no king," Kenna reminded him.

"Then I shall have to make tonight last a lifetime."


End file.
